Really? I'd prefer to get YOUR thoughts on the matter . . .
According to their marketing strategy and according to our lemming-like perceptions, Toyota has long been the leader in environmental sustainability.
Is it true? NOPE.
Being a sustainable business has nothing to do with what you "say" you do - it has nothing to do with your marketing strategy. Being a sustainable business - both in longevity and in positive social and environmental impact - is 100% dependant on your daily, conscious decisions.
According to Toyota, "Green. That's how we'd like the world to be. As an environmental leader, Toyota does more than meet industry standards - we seek to raise them. Along with our partners, we're working toward a future where a wide range of innovative vehicle and fuel technologies and infrastructures converge to create an economically vibrant, mobile society in harmony with the environment."
Under this new definition, is Toyota an environmental leader? Again, NOPE.
Why? Toyota makes the same bad decision 100 times and gets caught 3 times. Those are good odds as far as they're concerned.
Toyota has recalled their truck lines every year since 1987. They started recalling the 2004-2010 Toyota Tacoma back in late September for the same accelerator problem that their cars have. They've recalled massive quantities of Toyota trucks over the last 23 years (YES, 23 years) for:
- Faulty headlights made from "parts sold for use as aftermarket equipment."
- Defective trailer hitches (I'm sorry, but that's scarry!)
- Deffective fuel system & gasoline delivery hoses which would cause the trucks to explode in a side-impact accident
- Faulty driver-side seatbelts that don't work
- Randomly exploding airbags which sent people to the hospital and caused multiple accidents
- Incorrect load carrying capacity for the tire selection and rims in 2009 and 2010 cars and trucks because vehicles were being overloaded and crashing
The list goes on and on . . . . . .
Interesting to note that most of the truck recalls since 1987 were due to NOT meeting the US Federal Guidelines for Safety. There have also been multiple recalls on different Toyota the vehicles made the same year. Toyota knew about their accelerator problems - they've been installing them in the Toyota Tundra and the Toyota Tacoma since the end of 1995. And yet . . . what? Let's keep putting those faulty accelerator problems in all of our cars too and hope nobody notices?
Another unsustainable decision? Toyota recalled HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of Tacoma trucks from 1995-2000 because they skipped the steps of protecting the body of the vehicle from excessive corrosion. Oops. They promised to fix the problem on the assembly line. Three years later, Toyota had to recall HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of Tundras made after 2000 for the SAME problem.
Here's a question for you: where are all of these faulty parts coming from? Third-world countries all over the world. And, once removed, where are all of these recalled vehicles with their faulty parts going? Our landfills.
Toyota should be paying tariffs, taxes, and international fines for dumping waste in American territory.
All of this on top of the little-discussed fact that we buy hybrid cars thinking that they're good for the environment when in fact they're made with nickel-lead-lithium metal hydride batteries - a corrosive carcinogenic - that goes into our landfills, into our water supply, our food supply and our children.
Toyota is very clever. They don't really have to do the right thing for the environment.
They just have to tell us that they do, and we'll nod and smile and go out and buy their products.
When we see a Toyota on the road, we should say "Oh look at that good citizen!" We could (justifiably) say "Look at that poor yoke who didn't do their homework and got duped!"
Why aren't Toyota owners more angry? Why aren't they revolting? They thought they were doing the right thing - buying from the right company - and now they have to kill off all of our fish, dump lead into our food supply, and send their loved ones to the hospital with neurological damage just to get rid of their purchase.
But when our own government defends Toyota saying that "it is unfortunate and unfair that Toyota has fallen victim to aggressive and questionable news coverage" (would that be a blog post like this one?) I guess we really don't have to fix the core problem, really educate consumers on companies that practice what they preach, or hold Toyota liable for their marketing antics that continuously prove to be untrue.
Really? I'd prefer to get YOUR thoughts on the matter . . .
Environmentally-friendly . . . blah, blah, blah. We've heard about it and we nod and smile in mere recognition with an abstract awareness of something that is supposed to be a good thing.
The reality is that most of us have good intentions. But don't good intentions pave the road to hell? Yeah sure, we buy those nifty light bulbs, and we're mostly good at recycling. We follow popular culture and its media swoon which makes "environmentally friendly" the new, ubiquitous, poorly defined slang-du-jour. We'll buy something if it is colored brown and green and says it is "environmentally friendly" on the label without really understanding what makes a product environmentally friendly or that those words (and packaging color scheme) are the hottest marketing trends since the word "healthy" or the completely invented food category called "all natural."
Casting good intentions aside, is it actually possible to ACTUALLY BE climate-smart? Climate Pilots is an interesting live snapshot of 4 households who are actually trying to BE "environmentally friendly" utilizing those words as a VERB and not merely descriptive adjectives. These individuals are actively learning (yes, key words in this sentence) what it means to learn how and why to life a climate-smart lifestyle through direct lessons in food, time usage, energy, and transportation.
So, which Environmental Bandwagon - which "eco-friendly" bus would you like to take? The one that has pretty colors and media catch phrases, or the one that forces you on a learning journey to understand our finite planet and our daily actions and provides for you a discerning eye through which to make sound, qualified decisions?
Follow the Climate Pilots, and learn along with them as they grow in awareness of what it means to use "environmentally friendly" as an action verb.
Really? I'd prefer to get YOUR thoughts on the matter . . .
In 2009, "Global" became the most bantered, misunderstood, and most overused adjective. We have "global challenges" that require "global agreements" with "global alliances."
Janet Daley thinks that "global" thinking won't necessarily solve the world's problems.
Thinking of problems in a global context endangers the fundamentally basic principles of accountability - the accountability of our own actions to our immediate environments, and the accountability of our elected officials to our country and with our engagement with other world leaders.
There are no "global challenges." Many countries and many individuals may face the same issues. Labeling a challenge or an impending issue as a "global" one means that we assume that my contributory actions are the same actions of everyone who faces the same issue, that my reparative responses must be identical to the responses of everyone else in every other country, and that we must have a 100% consensus of agreement to which remedial responses every country on the planet will choose -- regardless of the differences in our societies, our political governance, or our cultural norms and values.
The idea that our elected officials might not necessarily need to take action because an issue is a "global challenge" is scapegoat with a capital S.
Requiring "global responses" to our impending issues leads to an apathetic "Well it's not MY fault!" mentality. If my country doesn't agree with Zimbabwe, and if Zimbabwe doesn't agree with Israel, and Israel doesn't agree with Columbia - then neither Zimbabwe, Israel, or Columbia should take any corrective action yet to resolve our "global issues" until they all agree.
Regardless of the adjective-du-jour, the bottom line is that we are ALL ACCOUNTABLE FOR OUR OWN ACTIONS.
No clever shift in linguistics will ever absolve us of that fundamental fact. On the home front, we are equally apathetic. We know what problems face our society and we wait to employ better, corrective decisions in our daily lives while our elected leaders attend world summits.
Climate change, high obesity rates, bank collapses, the mortgage crisis . . . . . . . . What have we do to contribute to these problems and what are we going to do to take corrective action? At home? In our businesses? In our neighborhoods?
Really? I'd prefer to get YOUR thoughts on the matter . . .
The Right To Hang laundry is prohibited for aesthetic reasons according to a Reuters article, U.S. Residents Fight for the Right to Hang Laundry.
Who would be so terribly silly? Principal opponents are the housing associations such as condominiums and townhouse communities that are home to an estimated 60 million Americans, or about 20 percent of the population. About half of those organizations have 'no hanging' rules, and enforce them with fines.
Only in the United States would drying clothes outside, in the air and sunlight, be considered as an "unnatural" detriment to property value. Apparently, our undergarments are too ghastly to display in public. According to an ABC report, U.S. households spend at least $100 per year drying our clothes simply to keep our skivvies out of the limelight.
A simple, energy efficient solution, and one that requires a little space and about $10 worth of technology, is to hang clothes outside to dry saving for than $25/month on one's electric bill.
From a purely environmental point of view, dryers use 10-15% of domestic energy in the United States. Too, heat is created and then dumped outside without any system in place to recapture and reuse that heat. We recapture dirty water. Why not dirty hot air?
From a health and wellness point of view, dryer sheets not only contaminate and pollute our environment, but are toxic for humans as well. According to the health and wellness website Sixwise.com, some of the most harmful ingredients in dryer sheets and liquid fabric softener alike include benzyl acetate (linked to pancreatic cancer), benzyl alcohol (an upper respiratory tract irritant), ethanol (linked to central nervous system disorders), limonene (a known carcinogen) and chloroform (a neurotoxin and carcinogen), among others.
Seacoastonline.com reported on The Danger of Dryer Sheets. According to the manufacturers' Material Safety Data Sheets the chemicals above may cause one or more of these effects: central nervous system disorders, headaches, and loss of muscle coordination; liver or kidney damage, allergic reactions, skin disorders, cancer, nausea, dizziness, or vomiting. One ingredient in dryer sheets, camphor, is readily absorbed through body tissues, Environmental Protection Agency listing warns, "Avoid inhalation of vapors." It potentially causes CNS disorders (multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's diseases and others). No one knows how or if its effects are enhanced when combined with the other listed chemicals.
Advocating for the Right To Hang, Project Laundry List is making air-drying and cold-water washing laundry acceptable and desirable as simple and effective ways to save energy. According to them, there are more reasons to hang laundry to dry whenever possible: clothes last longer, sunlight bleaches and disinfects, indoor racks can humidify in dry winter weather, and clothes dryer fires account for about 17,700 structure fires, 15 deaths, and 360 injuries annually.
For those who don't want to give up the benefits of your dryer but are afraid to risk exposure to potentially toxic chemicals from your dryer sheets, spend time on National Geographic's Green Guide for available alternatives.
Every little thing we do for our bodies, our families, and our environment helps.
The fact that we have to fight for the Right to Hang when we have full rights to own and carry loaded weapons to the grocery store to buy our dryer sheets is completely silly, indeed.